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(CHICAGO) (WLS) -- Lawyers for a west suburban teenager charged with a downtown bomb plot say he was caught in a "fake war on terror" contrived by U.S. spy agencies. Each week it seems as though there is a new salvo of accusations by the legal team defending Hillside 19-year-old Adel Daoud. On Tuesday, a court filing by Daoud's attorneys characterizes U.S. spy agencies as outlaw arms of the government that snagged the west suburban teenager in a dummied-up bomb plot. The nation's intelligence gathering agencies, they believe, are operating in what amounts to a fourth, runaway, branch of government. Daoud was arrested a little more than a year ago, according to authorities planning to detonate a car bomb at this downtown intersection that would take out a popular nearby bar--if it was real. But the so-called plot was a sting operation and the bomb operatives worked for the FBI.

"Look, he's a young kid," said Daoud attorney Thomas Durkin. "He just graduated from high school." Durkin, from the beginning, has cried foul about the government investigation and tactics. In the sharply-critical Daoud surveillance motion filed Tuesday, Durkin states that the government has concocted a "fake choice between national security and civil rights, not unlike the fake war being conducted in our name against terror." Durkin, a former assistant U.S. Attorney in Chicago, states that: "The usually reliable representations of the U.S. Attorney's office can no longer be trusted. . .because the intelligence agencies. . . simply do not inform the local prosecutors of all material information." "The spy agencies," Durkin writes, "are as fearful of the prosecutors as they are defense counsel". . .and "just as easily compromised."

During the investigation, FBI agents secretly recorded phone conversations at the suspect's home, and elsewhere, and they monitored internet communications. Prosecutors have argued that evidence must be held in secret, from both the public and the defendant-- and so far, the courts have agreed. Lawyers for the 19-year old man from west suburban Chicago are challenging the initial legal grounds permitting authorities to monitor his communications. They contend Daoud may have been targeted by intelligence agencies for viewpoints expressed on the internet. The accused teenage jihadist remains in federal custody without bail, where he has been for 14 months. Authorities have said that Daoud made statements he intended to kill 100 people and injure 300. As his attorney continues a vigorous challenge of government tools and tactics, prosecutors declined to comment to the I-Team.

Four days before a sweeping government surveillance law was set to expire last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, took to the Senate floor. She touted the law’s value by listing some of the terrorist attacks it had helped thwart, including “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” that fall. “So I believe the FISA Amendments Act is important,” the California Democrat said before a vote to extend the 2008 law, “and these cases show the program has worked.”Today, however, the government is refusing to say whether that law was used to develop evidence to charge Adel Daoud, a 19-year-old Chicago man accused of the bomb plot.And Daoud’s lawyers said in a motion filed Friday that the reason is simple. The government, they said, wants to avoid a constitutional challenge to the law, which governs a National Security Agency surveillance program that has once again become the focus of national debate over its reach into Americans’ private communications.“Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly,” lawyers Thomas Durkin and Joshua Herman wrote in their motion. “When a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets.”

Four days before a sweeping government surveillance law was set to expire last year, Sen. Dianne Feinstein, the chairman of the chamber’s Intelligence Committee, took to the Senate floor. She touted the law’s value by listing some of the terrorist attacks it had helped thwart, including “a plot to bomb a downtown Chicago bar” that fall. “So I believe the FISA Amendments Act is important,” the California Democrat said before a vote to extend the 2008 law, “and these cases show the program has worked.”Today, however, the government is refusing to say whether that law was used to develop evidence to charge Adel Daoud, a 19-year-old Chicago man accused of the bomb plot.And Daoud’s lawyers said in a motion filed Friday that the reason is simple. The government, they said, wants to avoid a constitutional challenge to the law, which governs a National Security Agency surveillance program that has once again become the focus of national debate over its reach into Americans’ private communications.“Whenever it is good for the government to brag about its success, it speaks loudly and publicly,” lawyers Thomas Durkin and Joshua Herman wrote in their motion. “When a criminal defendant’s constitutional rights are at stake, however, it quickly and unequivocally clams up under the guise of State Secrets.”

If the government acknowledged that it had used evidence derived from the FISA Amendments Act, Daoud would have standing to challenge the law’s constitutionality. Specifically, Daoud’s lawyers would be able to take on a provision known as Section 702. The law permits the interception of foreign targets’ ­e-mails and phone calls without an individual warrant, including when the foreigners are in communication with Americans or legal residents.The U.S. Supreme Court in February rejected a constitutional challenge to Section 702 by a group of journalists, lawyers and human rights advocates, saying they had no standing to sue because they had not proved that their communications had been intercepted.But the court also said that if the government intends to use information derived from the Section 702 surveillance in a prosecution “it must provide advance notice of its intent,” and a defendant may challenge the lawfulness of the surveillance. The government assured the court that it would give such notice to criminal defendants.In a filing this month in Chicago, U.S. Attorney Gary S. Shapiro refused to say whether the evidence was obtained under Section 702. Instead, he said, the government told Daoud the evidence was acquired pursuant to a traditional FISA court order, rather than under the expanded surveillance program authorized in 2008. A traditional order requires the government to go to a FISA judge and show probable cause that the target is an agent of a foreign power.Daoud’s attorneys say in their pleading that the government is being disingenuous. “We believe it is clear that the evidence . . . came from Section 702,” Durkin said in an interview. “Either Senator Feinstein’s information was correct in December 2012, or she was given wrong information. The government has never disputed what she said.”

U.S. special forces captured the head of ISIS's unit trying to develop chemical weapons in a raid last month in northern Iraq, two senior Iraqi intelligence officials told the Associated Press, the first known major success of Washington's more aggressive policy of pursuing the jihadis on the ground. The Obama administration launched the new strategy in December, deploying a commando force to Iraq that it said would be dedicated to capturing and killing ISIS leaders in clandestine operations, as well as generating intelligence leading to more raids.

U.S. officials said last week that the expeditionary team had captured an ISIS leader but had refused to identify him, saying only that he had been held for two or three weeks and was being questioned. The two Iraqi officials identified the man as Sleiman Daoud al-Afari, who worked for Saddam Hussein's now-dissolved Military Industrialization Authority where he specialized in chemical and biological weapons. They said al-Afari, who is about 50 years old, heads ISIS's recently established branch for the research and development of chemical weapons.

Beyond intelligence value, the capture could strike a blow to what Iraqi and American officials have described as a determined effort by ISIS to develop chemical weapons. The jihadi group was believed to have set up a special unit dedicated to chemical weapons research, made up of Iraqi scientists from the Saddam-era weapons program as well as foreign experts who joined the group. Iraqi officials expressed particular worry over the campaign because ISIS gained so much room to operate and hide chemical laboratories after overrunning around a third of the country in the summer of 2014, joined with territory they controlled in neighboring Syria.

On Wednesday, militias allied with the Syrian Army ambushed a convoy of terrorists in the Sweida province, confiscating the weapons they were attempting to transfer to terrorists in the Eastern al-Badiya desert. Among the weapons left behind after the battle were mortar shells, land mines, RPG shells, ammunition of machineguns and Israeli-made LAU missiles.

How do the terrorists in Syria get those Israeli-made weapons? FARS News Agency, via the Times of Israel, has the answer: In a video uploaded to YouTube by the Executive Sharia Council in the Eastern Daraa region, a court established by al-Nusra in Southern Syria, Sharif As-Safouri, the commander of the FSA’s al-Haramein Battalion, admitted to having entered Israel five times to meet with Israeli officers who later provided him with Soviet anti-tank weapons and light arms, Times of Israel reported. Safouri was abducted by the al-Qaeda-affiliated al-Nusra Front in the Quneitra area, near the Israeli border, on July 22. “The [opposition] factions would receive support and send the injured in [to Israel] on condition that the Israeli fence area is secured. No person was allowed to come near the fence without prior coordination with Israel authorities,” Safouri said in the video. While al-Nusra and the FSA have collaborated in the battlefield against Syria, friction has intensified as they began to implement their stringent version of Islam in the area, establishing local Sharia courts. In the edited confession video, in which Safouri seems physically unharmed, he says that at first he met with an Israeli officer named Ashraf at the border and was given an Israeli cellular phone. He later met with another officer named Younis and with the two men’s commander, Abu Daoud. In total, Safouri said he entered Israel five times for meetings that took place in Tiberias. Following the meetings, Israel began providing Safouri and his men with “basic medical support and clothes” as well as weapons, which included 30 Russian [rifles], 10 RPG launchers with 47 rockets, and 48,000 5.56 millimeter bullets.